


everyone, see, I love him

by elderflowergin



Category: Hyena (TV 2020)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:01:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25215916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elderflowergin/pseuds/elderflowergin
Summary: Yoon Hee-jae, as seen through the eyes of yet another whip-smart middle-class kid with a chip on the shoulder.
Relationships: Yoon Hee-jae/Kwon Yong-un
Comments: 27
Kudos: 13





	everyone, see, I love him

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to @thefeastandthefast for, as usual, commissioning this robbery, counting the loot and then driving the getaway car. I didn't do much except cry when I had to change all the tenses.
> 
> @my-randominterests, thank you for entertaining my questions about naming conventions and, of course, for the duckling reference.

Yong-un was looking for an empty study cubby when he chanced upon a long line of his fellow students outside his usual room. There was a fair bit of chatter but he ignored it and powered past them to the door. They gasped when he coolly turned the handle and walked in.

The boy inside looked up at him over the tops of his glasses. Someone else might have called it a look of disdain, but it seemed more searching than anything else.

"Are you here for the notes?" He turned back to his books, as if he wasn’t particularly interested in the answer.

Yong-un put his haversack down, noting the pens, the expensive football cleats hanging off the boy’s backpack and the brand-new books wrapped in plastic.

"No," he replied. "Is that what the line’s for?"

The boy frowned. "Either you've been hiding under a rock or you don't pay attention. They want my brother's notes. He was valedictorian three years ago."

Yong-un stared at him. Of course he'd heard of the Yoons; anyone who'd been to the library would have known since it was conspicuously named for the man who was surely this boy’s great-grandfather.

Everyone knew the legendary CJ Yoon, who served at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal and went on to a storied career as the first post-independence Chief Justice. His legacy included delivering judgments that enhanced labour and consumer protections in the country, guarding the Constitution in the face of coups with a spine of steel, and, of course, taking down colonial oppressors and war criminals. The man was a national hero.

"I'm just here to study. Kwon Yong-un, by the way," he said, taking out his beat-up notebook and pen.

“I’m Yoon Hee-jae,” he replies.

Hee-jae pushed his glasses up his nose bridge and smiled down at his notes. Yong-un thought, how fetching.

The Yong-uns of the world tended not to interact with the Hee-jaes of the world, unless they were trying their best for an upgrade into the Hee-jae side of the world. Yong-un was at the top of the poorer scholarship half with zero interest in sucking up; Hee-jae was comfortably ensconced in the privileged, legacy half.

Yong-un saw him with his half, and it was interesting how ill-fitting he was around them. Of course, Hee-jae wasn't legacy at all - he was a nerd, top of his class before he got to SNU and no one in his family had ever needed to pull strings to be where they were. He sneered, scowled and was generally unpleasant, and the crowd he was with seemed too dim to distinguish if he was scowling at them or with them. The few who could needed him around, because a Yoon friendship wasn't just about notes, but currency.

(It's years before Yong-un understands what all of that means; his parents ran an auto repair shop and he's never quite managed to grasp this oily black market that runs beneath the not-that-civilized veneer of law school.)

Hee-jae was different around Yong-un; he was shy, almost nervous. They both sat on the student ethics reform committee, a collection point for all the closet justice cases who were trying to change the world. Hee-jae had his opinions on corruption and nepotism - daring for the fourth generation of career judges - and shared them with Yong-un, almost sheepishly.

Yong-un got the sense he was auditioning, somehow. Yong-un understood it; he was interesting to Hee-jae because he wasn’t interested in impressing Hee-jae. That was probably all the novelty he presented to someone like that.

They kept trading off the first and second positions for the first year, until he conclusively beat Hee-jae's ranking somewhere in their second year. Yong-un didn’t know about it until Hee-jae turned up at his hostel room door at six in the morning. He was in a dark blue polo shirt and Bermuda shorts and weirdly, flip flops. He panted like he’d run up all five flights of stairs.

"You better not have driven," said a bleary Yong-un, still half-asleep after a night at the auto repair shop, because there had been accidents with people wearing their flip flops to drive. He was irritated as Hee-jae blundered past him into the room, his smile so bright it felt like the noonday sun. He paced around and Yong-un just stared at him.

"Dad was having drinks with the Dean last night," he said, words coming out in a rush.

"I was at the workshop all night and I'm tired. What's going on?"

"You topped the class, Yong-un," he exclaimed. Then he took Yong-un's face in his hands and kissed him soundly.

Yong-un idly wondered if it was Hee-jae’s first kiss, whether it was his own - did that exchange student back in high school count, what any of it was supposed to mean -

Then Hee-jae's teeth drew out his lower lip, his hands moved down to drag Yong-un's hips flush against his own, and Yong-un’s brain did the impossible: _it shut the fuck down_.

-

In the years to come, Yong-un will have very little opportunity or time to think about things like love or relationships. He'll barely have time to sleep, let alone think of ephemeral things.

But he will think of these things sometimes:

\- Hee-jae charming his parents over a simple homemade dinner (his eyes were so soft whenever he looked at Yong-un's mother, and she in turn practically adopted him the way good mothers do when they see lonely ducklings fiercely paddling away - with an inexplicable, forceful loyalty that was beyond that of the blood. She continued sending him jars of cookies, and he knew Hee-jae treasured each one even though he claimed to have given up refined sugar along with breakfast);

\- Hee-jae at the auto repair shop late one night smearing motor oil on Yong-un's nose ("this is why I kissed you that day, I could still smell this on you" and, yes, stepping into the shop alone at night still sets off muscle memory);

\- Hee-jae bringing Hyeok-jae's notes out of sheer desperation over Trusts and forcing them onto Yong-un. ("Listen to me, this is no time for pride," he'd said, forcefully stuffing his brother’s papers into Yong-un's bag over his protests.)

But what's love, he thinks, if not a beautiful boy in flip flops and a summer solstice grin who was overjoyed to see you win? Even if it means he lost? Even if that night, he had a stern talking to about losing top position and what it meant to be a Yoon? What does it say that he still appeared on your threshold and kissed you because you smelled of motor oil?

If that wasn't the stuff of fucking love, what was?

-

They decided to watch The Devil's Advocate in Yong-un's room one rainy afternoon, after their ethics reform committee meeting and before Hee-jae’s yet-to-be-cancelled football practice. It was ironically an illegal download procured from the engineering students next door; it played on Yong-un's beat up laptop, propped up on a chair while they sat up on his bed.

It was lunchtime but Hee-jae claimed not to be that hungry; that they could eat later too.

"It's ramyeon, that spicy one you really like," replied Yong-un in disbelief. Delaying mealtimes was not something Hee-jae did; he was always complaining about his blood sugar levels and feeling faint during exams.

Hee-jae smiled and played the movie first. If Yong-un had been watching closely he might have seen the blush high on his cheekbones, but he was far too focused on Keanu Reeves defending a child molester.

It wasn't long before Hee-jae started kissing his neck, sweet and aimless. He was so single-minded in his devotion and Yong-un was helpless to resist; so before long, Hee-jae kicked it up a notch and slid his hand beneath his shirt to brush over his left nipple, then unbuttoned his shirt slowly, kissing every new horizon of skin that opened up to him. Yong-un reached up to touch him but Hee-jae stilled his hand. "No," he ordered, turning back to the screen, "Watch the movie."

Yong-un placed his sweaty palms on the bed, clenched his fingers and felt like he was about to keel over and die. Hee-jae sounded perfectly normal by contrast, that asshole. It felt like a thousand years had passed when Keanu's mother shared a lift with Al Pacino, and Hee-jae dropped to the floor on his knees. He pulled Yong-un's cock out, casual-like, and he looked up at Yong-un, sloe eyes darker than rainclouds. There was no preamble; he took Yong-un down, root to tip, and Yong-un thought, I am really going to die now, before we get to Al Pacino's speech about free will -

He came and it was like a flash of lightning and spring rain all at once. “What are you -- what can I do,” he gasped as he hauled Hee-jae up. Hee-jae fairly crashed into him as they kissed, fierce and unrelenting, spectacles misting up and knocking against each other before Yong-un batted them off.

“Just touch me,” breathed Hee-jae, voice finally a little hoarse and uneven, “I’m very close,” and Yong-un did, rubbing his knuckles against the hardness, relishing the hitch in his voice as he reached in and touched Hee-jae, skin-to-skin, thumb in restless circles over the head of his dick, and Hee-jae trembled and came, and came.

-

In their final year, things started to seem a little brittle. It was as though they were both aware of an invisible clock counting down and refused to address it in a mature way. Yong-un threw himself into moot competitions and spent most of the summer interning with the prosecutors’ office; Hee-jae took on several internships at law firms and conspicuously avoided the government and ministry altogether, much to Yong-un’s surprise, since that precluded most policy and reform work.

“I honestly didn’t take you for private practice,” he said one day, a lot more casually than he felt about the question. The Yoons rarely did; it was the Chinese wall they had conjured up to protect their independence as Confucian gentlemen of the courts. “I thought it’s either the ministry or prosecutors' office, like me.”

Hee-jae hummed in response across the study table. “Oh, you know. I’ve been talking to Uncle Pil-jung. And I’ve been thinking about opening up my options a little.”

Yong-un didn't understand Hee-jae's world precisely, but he didn't have to to know that Song Pil-jung was bad news.

The thing was, Yong-un’s own father was a lovely man - not gifted with intellect like his mother, but a dab hand at machines. He understood that Yong-un was talented in ways he was not and he’d tried his best to give Yong-un the opportunities his mother didn’t get to have.

Yong-un didn’t understand what it meant to always fall short, or to feel like you do, which might have been the same thing; he didn’t understand distant fathers and their choking, ever more distant legacies. If he did, Yong-un might have understood the appeal of Song Pil-jung.

As it stood, though, he did not.

Song Pil-jung was all designer herringbone suit, oxblood shoes and an Audemars Piguet watch that peeked out from beneath his left cuff whenever he locked his fingers together. He was not a tall man; Hee-jae hunched a little when he was right next to Song Pil-jung, which Yong-un found enraging for no reason he understood. He was viciously glad that this man didn't have children of his own; he couldn’t imagine living with this edge of violence and ill-concealed pickup artistry all the time.

(He reminded Yong-un of the hustlers in his neighbourhood; men with equally greasy smiles, money from vague sources like "courier services" and an undercurrent of nastiness; it didn't surprise him in the least that Song Pil-jung came up from the streets. It used to surprise him that Song Pil-jung managed to get the elder Kim daughter to marry him, but he’d since learned that the man hadn’t seen a fraternal insecurity he didn't then exploit for his own purposes.)

He knew the spiel; they'd heard it from several firms, the prosecutors’ office, Ministry of Justice and now, from the premier law firm in the country. Every conversation thus far had been shades of annoying and sycophantic - they tended to be around promising young valedictorians and almost-valedictorians - but this was beyond that.

Song Pil-jung laughed a lot, smiled right up to the eyes and was generally charming, but none of it concealed the fact that the conversation was calculated to exclude Yong-un. The country club, friendships with families he’d never heard Hee-jae mention, and a nagging, repeated suggestion that Hee-jae simply had to meet the former Culture Minister’s younger daughter.

“I’m sorry, young man,” said Song Pil-jung to Yong-un. “Hee-jae’s just another one of the boys, to me, and I get carried away sometimes." He offered an indulgent look in Hee-jae’s direction, but Hee-jae was the one who looked like he’d been carried away, and Yong-un didn’t understand that at all. The apology was effusive, like it was intended to secure a doubly effusive refusal. Yong-un merely offered a tight smile in response and said nothing, and Song Pil-jung tilted his head a little, as if to reassess things. To reassess Yong-un, perhaps.

 _Pity_ , he thought. _Mother never did teach me manners._

-

The mistake Yong-un made was to talk about Song Pil-jung in bed.

(He now understands that the conversation shouldn’t have been had like this, in their post-coital glow; with Hee-jae’s chin on his bare shoulder, Hee-jae’s chest on his back, skin summer-warm and soft. Yong-un had pressed absentminded kisses to the back of Hee-jae’s right hand, reverent and lazy, like he’d had all the time in the world to do this.)

“Why do you like him so much?” He meant it only half-seriously because he thought Hee-jae would come to his senses soon enough.

He felt Hee-jae’s jaw clench a little against his neck, like his entire body was tightening. This wasn’t the first time someone had raised this with him; Yong-un was sure of it, because instead of replying honestly, Hee-jae evaded him with a prepared, anodyne answer.

“The firm isn’t as bad as you think, you know,” he said, neutrally, although Yong-un knew this was likely more persuasive than he’d tried to be around his family. “His clients have a lot of influence over the system. There’s more than one way to change things for the better.”

Even he didn’t sound completely convinced, like he’d repeated a stock phrase someone else said without really considering its import.

“Will you even be doing a lawyer’s work? Or is it just cleaning up behind the sorts of people you should be taking to task?”

“Why do you sound just like my father,” stated Hee-jae, shifting away from him with a sigh. “It’s just a different path, that’s all. There isn’t just one way to do things. Private practice could initiate and lead change too.”

Yong-un wanted to yell at him that he wasn’t fifteen anymore, to stop being so damn naive, that this wasn’t the age for a fucked-up, ethically unsound rebellion. “I don’t see myself as a judge or as a prosecutor. And those roles can come with corruption too.”

“The corruption is the point with Song Pil-jung’s business. What’s next? A date with the Culture Minister’s daughter? A golf club membership, perhaps? Fancy clothes and designer watches? Hanging out with rich assholes on the weekend, pretending they’re funny and interesting people? You can barely stand to do it here.”

He felt Hee-jae freeze up next to him, his face shutting down and mouth twisting in consternation. Yong-un'd always hated that look and being the cause of it rankled. “Was there more, or are you done,” he said, pulling away from him to look for his clothes with visible discomfort.

There were plenty of things Yong-un wanted to say: _you have more in you than Song Pil-jung could ever hope to accomplish in his life_ and _you’re beautiful and I hate it, I hate it when you have to hunch next to a man who could never measure up to you_ and _stop giving yourself to people who will wreck you_ , but Yong-un was young too, and way too foolishly proud to say any of those things.

“No,” he said. “I’m done.”

-

The final nail in the coffin was the graduation party thrown by the Yoons. Yong-un was invited, as he always was to every event, and he was never quite sure if he would still be if he didn’t consistently top the class year after year.

As usual, Song Pil-jung slithered in and extricated Hee-jae to go chat with someone or the other, and Yong-un was left alone in a sitting room, nursing a Chardonnay and feeling unaccountably bruised. Hyeok-jae walked into the room then.

“You’re not with Hee-jae,” he said, making a statement rather than asking a question, and then nodded in understanding with a rueful smile. “Our Uncle Pil-jung is -- well, I can’t say I understand the appeal.”

There was a part of Yong-un that was loyal enough not to pry, and there was the more insistent part of him that just wanted to know. He was still deciding between the two when Hee-jae chanced upon them. He was smiling before; it died on his face when he saw Hyeok-jae and Yong-un chatting.

Things stayed frosty until Yong-un decided to leave, and Hee-jae confronted him outside the Yoons’ garage, furious like he’d caught Yong-un with his mistress.

“Why are you even talking to my brother?”

Yong-un shrugged. “He walked into the room when I was there.”

“Were you two talking about me?”

Yong-un scoffed at this. “Do you really think we have nothing else to talk about?”

Hee-jae’s eyes were wild as he grasped Yong-un’s arms. “ _I don’t know_. When did you become one of them?”

“Have you actually thought about Song Pil-jung objectively?”

Hee-jae looked away from his face then. “You know, it is nice to have someone believe in me, for once.”

Yong-un knew better, he did. He knew these moods struck Hee-jae hard; that being the first Yoon not to be valedictorian had been tough on him. He knew that there was no counterpoint in the Yoon family to the criticism with the shitty exception of Song Pil-jung; that the legacy meant a Yoon was always above, and most importantly, apart from everyone else; that it doomed him to a kind of loneliness that Yong-un could not cure.

He knew all of that. It didn’t feel any less like he'd just gotten slapped in the face.

He simply removed Hee-jae’s hands off his arms, and walked away, eyes stinging. “I did, you fool. I believed in you.”

-

In the years to come, he’ll watch as Hee-jae drops football for CrossFit and ethics reform for a renewed interest in classical music. (It won’t escape his notice that Hee-jae’s giving up group activities for largely solitary ones). His lankiness will give way to a toned, graceful body and his gentle smiles, to a permanent sneer.

Yong-un will see his face in the newspapers; no softness to it anymore, age resetting his features into an angular, aristocratic look reminiscent of his late mother’s. Despite his noted prickliness, women throw themselves at him with a verve Yong-un never saw when they were in university.

They are on the opposite sides of a case often enough, but Hee-jae never offers the courtesy of communicating with him directly until the actual trial - every phone-call and letter is assiduously taken and written by his underlings. His designer suits are fussy and sharp, fancier than anything his brother or father wear.

(When Yong-un wins a trial against Song & Kim - Attorney Ma is no match for him, sadly - he’ll come back to his office to see an orange box with black lettering on his chair. Inside, there will be a solid grey tie with an unsigned card that just says: “Congratulations. Wear a tie befitting your status. Mum would agree with me.”)

He will give up all refined sugar along with breakfast, but he'll make an exception for the cookies Mrs. Kwon bakes and leaves with Yong-un so that there is still a pretext for her boys to meet.

(That’s when Yong-un will learn that Hee-jae still smiles, sometimes, when he thinks no one is looking.)

-

And then things changed, far beyond anything he could have imagined.

It was brave, what Hee-jae planned to do. He had never known anything but the Yoon legacy; it’d been drilled into him since he was a child, both a cudgel and the albatross around his neck. And here he was, handsome and gaunt, trying his best to fix the crumbling remains of it despite being an outsider to it now. Stupid, brave boy, he thought, ruminating over his coffee long after Yeon-ji had left.

He wanted to talk to Hee-jae after that disastrous trial. He thought about calling. He considered sending a polite text message to inquire after Hee-jae’s health and his dad’s health (because even if his dad betrayed him and the entire value system that Hee-jae swore by all his life and still couldn’t live up to, that sort of thing was still important).

He did none of those things. His mother ended up talking to Hee-jae when he was visiting one weekend. He could hear her comforting him on the phone, and he wondered if Hee-jae was crying, because something in the rhythm of his mother’s words made him think so.

She came out of her study, phone in hand.

“Is he alright?” Yong-un asked from the living room.

“Why do you care,” she shot back, sounding vexed.

He wished he could put it into words, but paradoxically, that had always been his weak spot. He’d made an unfixable mistake years ago; he’d become yet another person that Hee-jae had disappointed when he should have stepped up, principles be damned.

But he was nothing if not practical. If he had stepped up then, sacrificed the things he’d believed in - Hee-jae would still have had to go on and fulfil the Yoon legacy, and Yong-un would have been out both principles and love. That would have broken his spirit along with his heart.

This, he could still somehow swallow, even if it sometimes stung like an unlanced wound somewhere deep inside.

His mother didn’t bake anything that weekend.

-fin-

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. CJ Yoon's story is not historically accurate, but I wish versions of it were true for former colonies everywhere. 
> 
> 2\. The title is from Over The Love, by Florence and the Machine.


End file.
